Migrant shelter battle not over in Escondido

ESCONDIDO  The battle isn’t over yet between the city of Escondido and a nonprofit group that hopes to open a shelter within the city limits for dozens of unauthorized immigrant children.

The American Civil Liberties Union, representing Southwest Key Programs, on Friday filed an appeal to the City Council on behalf of the nonprofit, which seeks to house children in a 96-bed facility along West Valley Parkway. Last month, the city’s Planning Commission rejected the request.

The Escondido battle comes as national debate rages over the surge in recent months of more than 57,000 minors — many from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — who have entered the country to flee violence and poverty in their homeland. Children ages 6 to 17 have been temporarily housed while authorities look for their families and decide whether to grant them asylum or deport them.

In rejecting the shelter request, planning commissioners said using the facility on Avenida del Diablo for such a purpose was incompatible with the surrounding residential neighborhood.

The ACLU disagreed.

“The Escondido Planning Commission got it wrong on every count; none of its findings are substantiated by the facts,” ACLU attorney David Loy said in a statement released Friday.

The building had served as a skilled-nursing facility for about three decades before it closed last year. Loy said in a phone interview Friday that the impact of the shelter would be essentially indistinguishable from that of the nursing facility. It would have the same number of residents and would provide similar daily-living services.

“If the Planning Commission is concerned about impact on the neighborhood, why wouldn’t they want a top-level facility instead of a vacant building exposed to decay and vandalism. That would have a far greater negative impact in the community than a well run youth-housing center,” Loy said.

The planning commissioners rejected the shelter request in June, then affirmed their decision in July. The first meeting was attended by hundreds of people, most of whom opposed the shelter. Most of the 200 or so attendees at the July meeting supported the shelter.

Escondido Mayor Sam Abed said Friday the issue is one of land use, not immigration.

“Why would the ACLU get involved in a land-use issue?” Abed said. “It is outside the boundaries of their mission. For me, they are making a political statement.”

Loy said the ACLU sees the city’s refusal to open the housing center as “not motivated by land-use (concerns) but by hostility, discrimination and bias, or the city is caving into such by certain segments of the community. Freedom from unlawful discrimination are core ACLU issues.”

The city and the civil rights group have been at odds before. In 2006, Escondido leaders proposed an ordinance that would have penalized landlords for renting to unauthorized immigrants. The ACLU took the city to court. The measure was ultimately abandoned.

The two groups also battled over driver’s license checkpoints that critics said unfairly targeted Latinos; supporters said it was a traffic-safety measure.

Abed said the ACLU’s decision to step into the shelter debate is “an overreach,” and said site could be used to house people from the area.

“We have a moral obligation and commitment to our children, to our veterans and to our senior citizens first, and we are going to honor this obligation,” Abed said.

In the six-page appeal, the ACLU addressed concerns raised by the Planning Commission.

Among the ACLU’s points was that police had raised no law enforcement concerns, other than requesting a fence around the facility, which Southwest had agreed to put in. The appeal also notes that of the 9,000 children in Southwest facilities last year, only .0004 percent left the facility without authoritization.

The ACLU also argued the facility would not increase traffic, noise or bring parking problems.

Southwest would run the shelter under agreement with the federal Health and Human Services agency. Southwest referred calls Friday to the agency; the federal agency did not respond to a request for comment.

Southwest has for years operated two smaller centers in the region — a 14-bed center in Lemon Grove and an 11-bed facility near El Cajon. It also runs facilities in other California cities as well as other states.